When Russia passed its law on religion, everyone from the Vatican to
the U.S. White House to the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke out against
it. Now some small churches claim that local governments have taken the
law as a wink from the Kremlin that they are free to harass competitors
to the Russian Orthodox Church.

Svetlana Demina reports.

THE missionaries of the ecumenical Christian church Miloserdiye used
to be met warmly when they would visit small villages outside of St. Petersburg.

"We used to find a very good reception in those villages,"
said Yury Davydkin, 46 and the pastor of Miloserdiye (which is Russian
for "Mercy"). "Local authorities could clearly see that
our missionary work was bearing fruit. We helped people to come back to
normal life. As you know, villages are in an agony of hard drinking and
drug addiction."

All of that changed in October, Davydkin says, when President Boris
Yeltsin signed into law a bill granting special status to Russia's Orthodox
Church. Immediately afterwards, Davydkin said, Miloserdiye's missionary
work in the villages ground to a halt.

"The scheme of harassment in these villages was always the same,"
Pastor Davydkin said. "The directors of the Houses of Culture where
we held our meetings would raise our rent payments. Next, local Orthodox
activists would find supporters in the local administration [to drive us
out of town].

"In the village of Zhabino, for example, the initiator of a 'get
lost' campaign was a local school teacher. Activists like her encouraged
all the villagers to drive away the foreign 'non-traditional' missions.
As a result, we find it very hard to keep preaching. Some local administrations
just want us gone."

Moreover, Miloserdiye is based in an apartment building in Gatchina,
a suburb of St. Petersburg. When the group began to have problems with
the rent, it appealed to the Gatchina city administration for help.

The response was a visit by an "Independent Deputy Commission"
from the local legislature to investigate the church; a visit two days
later by the tax inspectorate; and subsequent visits by the fire and health
departments.

"Who is going to be next?" Davydkin asked. "I think that
it is really surprising that organizations which for years have never taken
any interest in this church's activity all of a sudden take a very keen
interest in it. The scheme of harassment seems quite clear: First you have
visitors from an Independent Deputy Commission or the like, next from the
tax inspect orate and in the end maybe the Anti-Economic Crime Police -
whose [eventual] visit we still aren't ruling out."

Davydkin and Miloserdiye are apparently lucky, however: They can count
among their friends and supporters the mayor of Gatchina, Stanislav Bogdanov.
With Bogdanov's help, not only did Miloserdiye survive the gauntlet of
inspections, they also got tax-funded assistance to pay their rent.

Other small churches have been less fortunate.

"We keep receiving requests from churches, our members, which are
facing religious harassment," said Igor Nikitin, who heads the Association
of Christian Churches of Russia, an umbrella advocacy group for such non-Orthodox
Christian churches.

"Unfortunately, the current law can be interpreted too freely.
It leaves too much room for all kinds of conjecture convenient for those
officials who dislike a church, a pastor or a parish for some reason...
Of course, the new law sounded to them like a trumpet call.

"Local authorities in small villages and towns immediately felt
like they were authorized to start harassing their parishes. In big cities
like Moscow and St.Petersburg such harassment is not as noticeable, and
probably not as feasible, as in the provinces."

The harassment, Nikitin added, has beefed up his association's membership,
which has gone from 12 churches before the law was signed to 45 churches
today, and more joining all the time.

Russia's religion law was also met with dismay in the West. The Vatican
protested it in a statement; the Archbishop of Canterbury criticized it;
and the U.S. White House lobbied Yeltsin until the last minute not to sign
it.

Catholics, Protestants, Mormons and adherents of other faiths the law
describes as "non-traditional" sects say the law is discriminatory
because of a provision requiring faiths to register with the state and
get its approval before they can preach or publish in Russia.

Regardless of the motives of those championing the law, critics contended
that its approval would be greeted as a wink from the Kremlin to local
authorities - a signal that they are now free to harass non-Orthodox faiths,
particularly evangelical Christian groups, who have gained many converts
in post-Soviet Russia.

Now, after three months and two Christmas holidays- the Western Dec.
25 and the Orthodox Jan. 7 - isolated reports of local harassment are indeed
trickling in:

A Protestant mission that until recently had worked with prisoners in
St. Petersburg jails has been barred by authorities, who have cited the
religion law and demanded they register their organization.

"We were getting along well with the city police," said the
head of this mission, who did not want either himself or his group to be
named. "We had signed an agreement with the city police that our mission
would have permanent access to local jails ... However, a few weeks ago
the same police official with whom we used to have small friendly tea parties
informed me that this agreement would soon be broken, by a seven-man commission
of police and Orthodox Church officials that has just been formed."

The Salvation Army was recently warned that it was to be evicted from
its meeting hall at 19 Bolshaya Monetnaya Ulitsa. Svetlana Maznova, director
of social programs for the group, said the director of the hall changed
his mind after he was told of the group's local charity work.

At the Moscow offices of the Orthodox Society of Sincere Piety, or Peter's
Commune, followers were searched and threatened by police officers, according
to Gleb Yakunin, a former Russian Orthodox priest who is outspoken on religious
matters.

Various other minor cases of harassment have been reported in Siberia,
Southern Russia and the Russian Far North by Russian media and by the Keston
News Service, which tracks religious news.

Supporters of the law have argued that it is a necessary tool in the
fight to control dangerous sects, which have flourished in Russia in recent
years.

They point to the White Brotherhood, a Ukrainian cult whose leader Maria
Devy Kristos was arrested in 1993, or to Aum Shinryko, the Japanese cult
that carried out a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995
that killed 12 and injured 5,000.

White Brotherhood members gathered November 1993 in Kiev to witness
an apocalypse they expected; police who eventually broke up the disappointed
gathering were left with several hundred children who claimed Kristos as
their only family.

Aum had 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 members in Russia. Investigators
say Aum got its sarin nerve gas from Russia, while some Russian media have
suggested Aum was stockpiling sarin for a similar terrorist attack on the
Moscow metro. It has since been disbanded, at least officially.

More recently and locally, this summer St. Petersburg police arrested
Takhir Vishnyakov, a 36-year-old hypnotist and the leader of an obscure
cult called the Galactic Federation, on suspicion of sexually abusing children.

Police said they made the arrest during a Galactic Federation ritual
orgy involving 20 cult members and their children at the House of Culture
in the town of Levashovo, 20 kilometers northeast of St. Petersburg.

"Before this [religion] law took effect, it used to be too easy
... for so many foreign cults and sects to sneak into Russia," said
Yury Novolodsky, a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. "This
law is not interfering in the life of religious organizations, only in
those manifestations of religion that are dangerous for society."

Critics of the law - among them the fiery Yakunin - respond that dangerous
sects are already covered by criminal law.

"There are really very few cults," said Yakunin in an interview
with The St. Petersburg Times. "Besides, as a rule the destructive
ones don't register [with the authorities]."

"The most dangerous destructive totalitarian sect is the Moscow
Patriarchy, which has discredited itself to the extent that Russia is destined
to become a Protestant country in ten years," added Yakunin, a Soviet-era
dissident and priest who was excommunicated by the Russian church for his
political views, and is now a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Yakunin is among a handful of critics of the Russian Orthodox Church
who argue that it only survived Soviet rule because it allowed itself to
be infiltrated by the KGB. Today, the Orthodox Church is also often criticized
for its extensive business dealings, which include oil-export and tobacco-import
deals worth millions of dollars.

"The Russian Orthodox Church is a Chekist mafia," stated Yakunin
flatly. (A Chekist was a member of the Cheka, an organization Lenin founded
as the forerunner of the KGB).

"[The church] has not been able to survive under the conditions
of democracy. This is why this law was lobbied by the Moscow Patriarchy
along with the Communists - in an attempt to restore its power and get
even richer."

One thing both supporters and critics of the religion law agree upon
is that the real meaning of the legislation will be defined in the by-laws
- a packet of legislation the Russian parliament may pass any day now that
will fill in many of the details of how the sweeping and general religion
law should be enforced.

"This is a country of by-laws. Everyone is waiting for them,"
said Dmitry Silchenko, a St. Petersburg lawyer who specializes in religious
law.